On last week’s episode drop for the latest season of Love Is Blind on Netflix, the newly formed pod couple Ben Mezzenga and Sara Carton started their day in their Minneapolis apartment all nice and cozy, wearing matching bathrobes. Then, after a trip to a local brewery with Ben’s friends on which everyone seemed to get along swimmingly, things got a lot less comfy. On the couch, gold wineglass in hand, Sara, a 28-year-old oncology nurse, “discovered” a TikTok video about Ben, a 27-year-old account executive, and confronted him about it. He was less than forthcoming about what happened.
The TikTok video in question was posted by user @hopeyoufindyourdad, now identified as a Minneapolis local named Andra Bergoff. As you know, this season of Love Is Blind has a small-town problem — everyone knows everyone already. And this TikToker was not the only Minnesotan to make a video calling out a cast member. But @hopeyoufindyourdad’s TikTok is so far the only one to make it into the world of the show.
In the minute-long video, Bergoff, who is otherwise not affiliated with the show, made vague accusations about Ben mistreating and manipulating women (herself included) while he was dating around at the University of Minnesota.
@hopeyoufindyourdad @Andra you think your dating life is hard? I’m calling out love is blind for this one #loveisblind #netflix #dating #minnesota
♬ original sound - Andra
“I haven’t talked to her in over four years,” Ben insisted, while Sara side-eyed him on the couch. “She’s already making up stuff about how I manipulated her and did all these different things. I hate talking bad about people, but she’s not — she’s overreacting.”
@netflix.reality.clips Sarah asks Ben to explain what she's seeing online #LoveisBlind #realityTV
♬ original sound - Netflix Clips - Netflix Clips
Ben then claimed that he met the TikToker on “Tinder, I think,” and that he doesn’t remember anything about their connection. “This wasn’t a relationship,” he added. “This is someone I went on, I think, maybe one date with and then met up at, like, bars, going out a few weekends and then didn’t talk to after that.”
Huh! Despite his lack of recall about the situation, Ben did seem prepared to address it. That’s probably because, according to Sara, the couch scene was set up by producers.
In an interview with Us Weekly this week, Sara revealed that she actually saw the TikTok for the first time off-camera. “That day when we were at the brewery, that’s when I saw the TikTok for the first time,” she said. “I left him and his friends to have their own chat together, I go outside and I’m with my assistant producer, I am on my phone, I’m scrolling, I see a TikTok come through on a Love Is Blind girls group chat. At this point, it’s been posted for a couple hours and there were hundreds of comments tagging Ben specifically. I was really confused because she never specifically said his name, but I’m like, ‘How are all these people pinpointing that it’s him? And how do all these people know who he is?’ I was really trying to understand.”
Sara said she then confronted Ben about it off-camera, but the producers separated them and asked them to reconstruct the conversation when they got back home.
Bringing the TikTok drama onto the show was an easy decision, show creator Chris Coelen told Entertainment Weekly in an interview. “The video was real,” he said. “We saw it on TikTok. We saw it, and the cast, the participants, saw it, and it was something that they had to deal with. We had to think [about] how do we deal with that for our participants? I think our commitment to them is just, we’re going to document whatever you’re doing, whatever is going on in your life. If there’s something going on in your life that’s an issue for you, or it’s affecting you in any way, our commitment is to just tell the story of what’s happening, whatever that is.”
What remains to be seen is whether Ben and Sara will weather the TikTok storm over the next four episodes and make it down the aisle. In the meantime, you can expect to see more social-media interference on the show. “This social media stuff creeps into people’s lives,” Coelen told EW. “And people are out there. They seek attention. Not everybody, but a lot of people seek attention, and if they think that they have an opportunity to latch onto something to get attention, some people are going to try to hitch themselves to that.”
So far, @hopeyoufindyourdad has not commented on her inclusion in the show. Perhaps she’ll have more to say once the finale airs.